After allowing an early goal in the first period of Game 3, the Washington Capitals lit up the Florida Panthers by scoring six unanswered goals. It was a commanding 6-1 win and complete payback from the 5-1 defeat in Game 2. The Caps now have the President’s Trophy winners right where they want them and have a chance tomorrow night to put a stranglehold on the series.
Usually it’s the Panthers who are providing the scoring as they entered this series as the league’s best offense by far. But the Caps shut them down thanks in large part to Ilya Samsonov and got some goals from heroes both likely and unlikely.
T.J. Oshie would tie things on the power play in the first period. Then the Caps would pile it on in the second period. After Samsonov made a big save, Marcus Johansson rewarded him with a backhanded snipe. Then Trevor van Riemsdyk beat Sergei Bobrovsky high glove side to make it 3-1.
Alex Ovechkin scored from his office on the power play midway through the third and the scoring didn’t stop there. John Carlson and Garnet Hathaway added goals of their own to put a bow on this one.
The Caps will go for the commanding 3-1 series lead in Game 4 on Monday night.
Capitals Head Coach Peter Laviolette put it simple, “This game, if we don’t follow it up, then that’s on us.”
T.J. Oshie said this after the win:
"“Playoffs have their swings in momentum. A team wins one game, the other team’s going to make some adjustments and come at you twice as hard the next game. They did that in Game 2, and it was our turn to respond in Game 3. I thought the boys did a great job from the drop of the puck all the way through. The score might have been 6-1, but we didn’t score our first goal for a while; we had to grind it out for a little while and just keep going and going and going, Sammy was great tonight, and a really good team effort.”"
Congrats to Larry on picking up his first career postseason point with the helper on this Garny goal that made it 6-1!#ALLCAPS pic.twitter.com/AZeVoQDv5w
— Washington Capitals (@Capitals) May 7, 2022
The Caps now know what they have to do to knock out the Panthers. The question is, will they do it? The offense has stepped up and Ilya Samsonov rose to the occasion when the team needed him to. There’s a very good chance that David can knock out Goliath once again.